E3 2009

UPDATE:According to Walter Day from Twin Galaxies, Billy Mitchell does not actually have a Twitter account, and someone maliciously posted this tweet using a fake Twitter account. Gotta love the internets sometimes. Maybe Billy isn't so bad after all? Personally, I actually got to meet Billy in person a few years ago and he was actually pretty cool. So there, haters. Cut the guy some slack.

- Billy Berghammer

The original story is as follows:

Thanks to G4's Twitter tracking, we were able to pick up on this little gem posted by gaming legend (and legendary smarm-fest) Billy Mitchell just a day after Steve Wiebe failed to break Mitchell's Donkey Kong world-record score live on G4tv.com during E3 2009.

Despite three-and-a-half valiant efforts (one was cut short by a power outage), Wiebe ended up around 60,000 points shy of the record when it was all said and done. It was quite a show as anyone who watched the live stream can attest. And we can all thank Mr. Mitchell for properly tainting the event like only he could/would by Tweeting the following:

"The day after #Wiebe could not pull it off feels even better. His three pathetic attempts at breaking MY [notice the capital letters used here to emphasize Mitchell's ownership] world record were almost honorable."

If I weren't so enchanted by your flowing brown mane and classless sub-par looks, I'd almost say I was disgusted with your remarks, sir. Fortunately for you, that's not the case.

On that note, how do you rate Mitchell's comments on the sore loser scale, with Steve Wiebe being the lowest and Billy Mitchell being the highest?

I was able to describe the first artwork for the upcoming Legend of Zelda game for Wii earlier this week, but Nintendo wouldn't let anyone in attendance take a picture. Thankfully, though, it released the artwork officially today. What do you think this tells us about the next Zelda game?

Previews

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Videos

Cheats and Walkthroughs

Previews

Review

Cheats and Walkthroughs

Previews

Review

Cheats and Walkthroughs

Karaoke games get a bad rap: sure, there's nothing all that exciting about the concept, and if you're playing it at home alone, it's a little pathetic, but sometimes, when the mood is right, a little drunken caterwauling is good clean fun. Karaoke video games are also versatile: are you and the family feeling a little bored after Thanksgiving dinner? Bust out Karaoke Revolution and you can avoid uncomfortable conversation with Conservative Uncle Carl.

There isn't all that much to say about the basic mechanics of Karaoke Revolution: You pick a song. The words, pitch, and timing scroll, then you grab the mic and go off. So it's the details that make the difference, and from my brief E3 2009 look, this game gets the details right.

If the trailer for Section 8 left you salivating, it's time to sate your appetite for beefed up, sci-fi combat with this thrilling bit of direct-feed gameplay, which shows powersuit-wearing badasses plowing each other down with futuristic rifles and automatic weapons.

While E3 is supposed to be for developers, game journalists, and other members of the video game industry, there are always a few ne'er-do-well celebrities — we’re looking at you, Robin Williams — who try and crash the bash, and get their filthy mitts on the new games, too. But this year’s show looks like it might be a Celebrity Free Zone thanks to “House of Game,” an event held the Monday before E3 began that let celebs and other Hollywood power brokers get their hands on some hot upcoming games without having to cockblock people at E3.

The impetus behind “House of Game” wasn’t just to keep Robin Williams from getting between us and Modern Warfare 2, though. “I came up with the idea after I took some celeb friends of mine to E3,” explains Tom Ham, a veteran game journalist who organized the event with Kevin Chang, a production executive at Misher Films who worked on the upcoming Johnny Depp movie Public Enemies, and Zach Schiff-Abrams, a producer at Mike DeLuca Productions whose next project is Brothers with Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire.

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Screenshots

It's actually surprising it's taken this long for a Sawvideo game. Take away the blood and gore and each Saw movie is essentially about a victim having to solving a series of puzzles or face an untimely death. That's the basic premise of almost every video game, so it's only natural someone would eventually put the two together. Saw is not a cheap cash-in, either; this was supposed to be one of the now-defunct Brash Entertainment's signature video game tie-ins and it's clear serious money was thrown at the project.

I've been tracking this game since Brash originally announced it. As an unabashed horror buff, I tend to play even bottom-of-the-barrel horror games. So, walking into Konami's lengthy presentation on Saw, it wasn't so much a matter of seeing if Konami could convince me I should play this, insomuch as it was defining my personal expectations of "how much will this totally suck?" Unfortunately, the demo didn't really answer that.

Review

When it comes to quirky, kooky and flat-out bizarre games about collecting as much random crap as you can by rolling around equally random settings in order to appease a body-less space king, the Katamari series is among the best. Bandai Namco’s next installment in the famed franchise, Katamari Forever, features a new story, new modes, new maps, new graphics filters, a remixed version of the original game’s soundtrack, runs in 1080p, and will be released exclusively for PlayStation 3 this Fall.

Katamari Forever tasks you, the Prince, with satisfying the outrageous demands of not one, but two collect-o-phile kings, King of All Cosmos and Robo King. Robo King assumes the throne after the King of All Cosmos falls into a coma and loses his memory. It’s therefore up to the Prince to traverse the game’s various maps, including five new Robo King maps (bringing the game’s total level count to well over 20) in an attempt to revive the fallen king and help him regain his tainted crown.

Madden dominates sports in the US, but around the rest of the world, FIFA is one of EA’s biggest franchises. And as soccer grows in popularity in North America, the series has become one of the fastest rising properties for EA in the States. As a result, EA decided to pull back the curtain on its latest footy update much sooner than usual. In the past, little news about FIFA would pop up until late Summer, but this year, the publishing giant chose to spotlight FIFA 10 at E3. I, for one, am glad they did.

News

Previews

Review

Videos

Cheats and Walkthroughs

I'm not huge into the Cooking Mama franchise. I've played the games a few times, and enjoyed 'em, but it's not like I go home and hang out and make crepes with Mama every night or anything -- I reserve my culinary Mama-interactions for special occasions. In order to do my preview of Majesco's Cooking Mama 3justice, I called on the expert help of G4tv.com's newest celebrity superstar -- Intern Meg -- and asked her to make a recipe with me and talk about the game.

Cheats and Walkthroughs

Gran Turismo's large roster of world-class race cars is coming to the very tiny PSP. Soon, you'll be able to hug the curves on the asphalt while your palms hug the curves of your PSP or PSP go, but until then you'll have to settle for this trailer.

In retrospect, it doesn’t seem like much of a shocker that Sony would bring LittleBigPlanet from the PS3 to the PSP. After all, the publisher has drafted handheld versions of several of its top-selling HD franchises. It’s also fortunate that, based on my five-minute demo, the core gameplay in LittleBigPlanet (or as I type in shorthand, “LBPSP”) seems to translate exceptionally well to a new platform.

One of the most celebrated fighting franchises of all time, Tekken has survived the ages and come out looking great. Take, for example, this direct-feed HD gameplay trailer of Tekken 6 from E3 2009, and see how the game has evolved over the years.